Let's All Go to the Rapture

He prayed to God, but He was silent.

Perhaps He'd always been silent. Perhaps when he thought he'd heard His voice, and enacted His will as best he could, he'd been hearing nothing. Those moments in his soul were but a figment of his imagination, or more damningly, the soul itself was nothing but a human construct. Perhaps he'd spent thirty years of his life not spending his life at all, giving his prayer to a false (or non-existent) god, and worse, taken his flock down the same path. Perhaps many things. Perhaps this, perhaps that. Before the Event, he had prayed, and found the answers. Now, at the dais of the Church of the Holy Mother, located on the outskirts of Dublin, he prayed, and heard nothing.

Was it right to say the silence was deaf or damning? And by the touch of silence, who was damned? He, one of those left behind, or God Almighty himself? Questions asked many times, answers never given. Yet still he prayed. Still he tried. Long enough and hard enough that he didn't hear the door to the church open, and it was only the soft footsteps coming from behind that alerted him to the visitor.

"We're closed," he murmured, not turning his head, or even opening his eyes. "Sunday service begins at eight."

"I know."

He opened his eyes.

"Still, the door wasn't locked, so I thought I might come in anyway."

He glanced around.

"Besides, it's raining something mighty outside, and what with half of the world's cabbies being dead, I had to take what I could."

We don't know if they're dead, he thought to himself. But he didn't say that. Half of the world's cabbies were dead. Half of the world's population was dead, period. Dead, ascended, or something else entirely. He couldn't say. No-one in the Catholic Church could say. No-one of any faith could say, and the world's scientists could only theorize. If people knew what had happened a week and a half ago, they weren't saying.

Still, he got up and hugged Brother Kensington, a motion that was gingerly returned. He didn't frown, but his soul, torn as it was, sagged slightly further. There was a distance between them. A coldness. The same chill he had felt from those who'd come to him for solace.

"Come on," he said. "I'll put the kettle on."

"Hmm," Kensington said. "Bet you do that a lot James."

He didn't say that he had, and that he he'd already had to buy more tea. Fortunately, the people who had survived the Event had learnt that tea could do them very little good.

"So how was the trip?" he called out, as he entered the church's kitchen.

"Useless, as expected."

He frowned, even as he opened a packet of Earl Grey. "Couldn't have been that bad."

"The Pope's not wise enough to know what happened, but still not so unwise as to claim that he knows the truth. Problem is, the bishops don't think that way. There's some who believe that any kind of statement is preferable to none." He heard Kensington chuckle. "Still, far less bishops in the Vatican than there were two weeks ago, so there is that."

James brought the tea out, frowning. "That isn't funny."

"Didn't say it was."

The two brothers sat down on the pew together, Kensington taking the tea and taking a sip. James didn't believe it was doing his soul any good. But then, while tea had failed, so had prayer. That half of the world was just…gone, was a fact. The human race had dealt with death since Adam and Eve sinned. But there'd always been a reason why. A means to avert it. But for the Event, there was no reason, and in hindsight, no means of avoiding it. Once, the world's population had numbered at around 7.6 billion. Now, it was around 3.8.

"So what do you think?" Kensington asked eventually.

"Me?"

"What does your flock think?"

"I don't-"

"Come on James, humour me." He took another sip. "I've spent the last five days in the Vatican listening to people who don't know anything, with only half of them having the balls to admit it. But you're on the ground. You deal with the souls left behind. What do you think? Is this the Rapture? Or something else entirely?"

He didn't answer, but that wasn't from lack of trying. He leant forward in the pew, putting his hands together. Not in prayer, but rather in thought. An attempt at reflection, rather than an attempt at communication. An attempt made many times, and once again, failed.

But he could guess. He didn't think it was the Rapture, or the End Times, or anything else predicted in the Book of Revelation. It what people the world over were calling "the Event," regardless of race, sex, or creed, half of the world's population had disappeared. Not in an instant per se, because he had seen what billions had saw. People crumbling into ash all around him. It didn't take long for some, even within the Church, to call it the Rapture. It took only slightly longer for people both inside the church and out to question that. The Event had removed half the world's population, that was true, but there was no rhyme or reason to it. There was no correlation found between those who had been taken (if that was the word to use), and those left behind. In a world driven to a frenzy, struggling to find out what had happened, it was found that the world's population hadn't only halved, but the halving had been applied equally in every location. For instance, Ireland had lost around 2.3 million people, compared to Britain's 32 million. Places like China and India had suffered far worse in terms of raw death, than countries like Sweden or New Zealand. People used the analogy of the butcher's knife, but James saw it as death by a thousand cuts – billions of deaths, cut down with expert, supernatural precision.

And the question was, was it death at all? Was it something more? Or something worse?

"Well?" Kensington asked. "What do you think?"

"I…" James rested his face in his hands. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Christ Almighty, I don't know!" He got to his feet and began pacing around. "You think I want to tell the people that come here that I do? That I've got answers? What, should I tell them that their loved ones are in a better place? Do I infer that those left behind are all sinners?"

"Maybe we are. Heck, you are. You just used the Lord's name in vain."

"Yes, well, least I'm doing something other than drinking fucking tea."

Kensington rested the teacup down on the pew. It was empty. In silence, his fellow brother got up, murmuring "goodnight."

He began to walk, and-

"I don't think it's God."

Kensington turned around, and for the first time this evening, James could see genuine interest in his eyes. Interest that didn't translate into words, but interest nonetheless.

"I don't think this was the Rapture," he said.

"Why?" Kensington asked softly.

"Because…" He took a breath – even now, the image brought tears to his eyes. "Because I don't think that God would take parents and leave children."

"Pardon?"

"I saw it," James said, his Adam's apple wavering. "I saw how on a day like any other, people around me began to crumble. Ash, flying around in the wind. Like Pompeii, without the eruption." He took a breath. "I saw the father first, he fell to the ground, complaining he wasn't feeling well. I didn't see what his wife did, because everyone around me was starting to crumble – think they thought it was a heart attack." He paused again. "But…then I heard the children screaming. They…" He took a breath, putting a hand to his mouth. "Their parents were taken. They weren't. They hugged them, you see. Hugged them as their parents were…taken, died, I don't know. Then they were hugging ash that was blowing around. Screaming for their mother and father. They…they couldn't have been more than three. Three! How do you lose your parents at three?"

"Maybe that's why they were spared."

"Bullshit," James said. "You…you think that? You think that's how you 'reward' a child? Taking their parents away from them like that? Taking half of everyone, children included, like that?"

"Maybe it's God's will."

"No," James said – the grief was starting to fade, only to be replaced by anger. "No. I can't believe that. I won't believe that."

"Why?"

"Because if I serve a god that would do that kind of thing to children…like that…what does that make me?"

"His faithful disciple."

Silence lingered between the two of them. The rain outside, James could hear it pick up. Could even hear a low rumble of thunder. It had been raining a lot in Dublin recently. Actually, it had been raining a lot everywhere, as if what had happened had changed the world's weather patterns along with its population.

"But anyway, it doesn't matter," Kensington said. He got up, yawning. "Don't think it's mattered for a long time."

"How long?" James murmured. Kensington ignored him and began walking towards the church's living quarters. "How long?" he repeated.

"Nearly a decade. Since New York."

James didn't have an answer to that. No-one of any faith had, though some had to deal with the question more than others. The question of, "what now?" How do we go forward in a world where we know intelligent alien life exists? How do we react to the knowledge that these aliens want to kill us? How do we, as a species, see ourselves in the greater context of the cosmos now?

Far as James was concerned, the question wasn't asked enough. The aliens had been the defeated. The Avengers were heroes, and heroes were cool, so the questions of "why," and "how," were replaced by "what?" Specifically on the "what" of who these heroes were, and not the larger context of their actions. He didn't think the events were related, and yet, he could remember a time when he saw the stars at night and could marvel at God's creation. Now, the stars were distant, cold, and at times, cruel. The world grew darker and darker, until the day the sun rose on a world of ash.

"Night," Kensington said, shuffling off to the dorms. "You get a revelation or something, let me know."

James didn't say anything. He just stood there, before collapsing into the pew. Watching the rain slide down the stain-glass windows. Listened to the wind, how it wailed. How it spoke for the people who had screamed as the end took them. For the people who screamed at being spared. He looked at the cross, and the Saviour Jesus Christ, son of God and Mary. Stared, and found himself unable to speak. Unable to reflect. Unable to pray. Unable to even cry, for his tears would just join the rain of a world that wept for its children and be lost.

Perhaps it would rain forever. Perhaps the world would flood.

But already, guilty and innocent alike had long been drowned. Not by water…

…but by ash.

A/N

The idea for this came from reading a comment on the Internet, about the idea of some people seeing Thanos's "I'm going to kill 50% of the universe's population through space magic" moment as the Rapture. Didn't chime in, but it occurred to me that it wouldn't take that long to work out that those who crumble to dust aren't going to have any particular pattern of faith to them, though it did give me the idea to jot this up. And while I originally envisioned this as a crackfic, I did go down the crackfic route with Murder by Numbers, so I thought I'd try doing a serious take instead this time.